Edirisinghe Brothers’ Hybrid Hub geared to offer best services to local hybrid car segment
Keeping true to its philosophy of enforcing ‘the notion of preventive maintenance on hybrid vehicles’, Edirisinghe Brothers’ Hybrid Hub was launched two years ago with its first centre located in Colombo, and has established itself as the hybrid vehicle experts in the county.
Specialising in servicing, repairing, maintaining and battery conditioning for hybrid vehicles, Edirisinghe Brothers Hybrid Hub has launched Sri Lanka’s second dedicated hybrid vehicle facility in the town of Piliyandala on October 5.
Mirror Business spoke with Edirisinghe Brothers (Pvt.) Ltd Hybrid Hub Chief Operating Officer Sanka Edirisinghe at the launch of the new facility, to discover the unique services the company has to offer to the hybrid market in Sri Lanka.
“We have some proprietary technology from Quarto Technical Services (USA), who specialises in conditioning and rebuilding hybrid batteries that have suffered from apparent capacity loss. We have also partnered with a company called Optima Werkz of Singapore, and since 2016 they’ve been our technical support partners. Our philosophy is basically ‘the notion of preventive maintenance on hybrid vehicles’, because there’s a myth that hybrid vehicles are very expensive to repair, and that is true. But a lot of the repairs can be avoided if proper maintenance and servicing is done regularly,” Edirisinghe said.
He urges customers to go on social media like Facebook and Google and check out the reviews and notice a common notion in all those reviews. He said that it was mainly about their highly skilled service advisors who actually handle the vehicles, who update the customer on what’s wrong and what needs to be done, educates the customer on how to maintain and service the hybrid vehicle and also gives driving tips to maximise fuel efficiency and prolong the life of the hybrid vehicle.
“Actually it’s like a doctorpatient consultation, and unlike in most medical facilities where the patient talks to the doctor for two minutes and the doctor gives the prescription, here our service advisors talk to the customer for maybe half an hour and we have the proper diagnostic tools to properly ascertain the real condition of the hybrid vehicle and then accordingly, because we have the right tools, we can pinpoint where the problems are and service and repair the right way,” he said.
Having acquired the batterycapacity reviving technology in 2016 with the launch of its first facility, Sanka remarked that the technology was acquired from Quarto Technical Services (USA) Chief Technical Officer and Founder Dr. Mark Quarto, who was also present at the launch of the new facility.
“His technology allows us to properly diagnose failing hybrid batteries. Most repair facilities or repair workshops in Sri Lanka, if they are handling a hybrid battery, they use a very basic tool, an electrician’s multimetre to check the voltage of a battery to assess whether the battery is good. So that is a very basic tool where you cannot actually determine the health of a battery by using a multi-metre and checking the voltage. You have to check the actual power and energy capacity of a hybrid battery to properly diagnose,” he added.
“So we have the tools and technology in our Battery Lab, which is our second battery lab (first one being in the Colombo Hybrid Hub), and using this battery lab we are able to pinpoint and diagnose and check on the power and energy capacity of the battery so that we can diagnose the batteries and repairs the right way.
With our technology, the nickel metal hydride battery, which is found in most of the bread-and-butter hybrids in the market, for example the Toyota Aqua, the Toyota Prius, the Axio, the Honda Civic, the Fit GP1, all those have the nickel metal hydride batteries. They are very resilient but they suffer from something called apparent capacity loss,” he explained. This groundbreaking technology has enabled Edirisinghe Brothers’ Hybrid Hub to build back upto 95 percent of the original capacity of those batteries, along with a warranty. “We also give system-generated before and after reports on the status of the battery for the customer to see,” he added.
“I stress on the fact that at Hybrid Hub, we emphasise on preventive maintenance, and at our facility, we like to call the customer the boss. We say that because in most repair centres, when you bring in the vehicle for a repair, they will start with one item and at the end of the day they’ll finish with ten other items that they would’ve replaced maybe even without permission and give you a bill in the evening,” Sanka stated. He went on to highlight that: “At our facility, along with the tools, the training and the proper team, we consider it a must that we inform the customer of the repair and what it entails and throughout the day, if any additional work needs to be done we inform the customer, we estimate to the customer and we get approval and then only we conduct the repair. So our customers are actually the boss in our facility, obviously under our advisement; we advise them and its their prerogative to decide whether they want to do this repair or to do the repair later, so as such we have had a very good response and we always ask our respective customers to go on our website and check out our reviews on Facebook and Google, and see what the general pattern is of what our customers tell us, and then visit us.”
Edirisinghe Brothers’ Hybrid Hub offers its expertise and customer-centric services at reasonable price points. The Hybrid Hub is part of Edirisinghe Brothers Ltd, which is a company that specialises in automotive engineering since 1947. The company’s Auto Court is Sri Lanka’s most renowned automotive engineering workshop and enjoys a reputation for enginere building that is unmatched. This 70-year history has inculcated in the organisation a dedication for precision in work, and a high standard for customer service - both of which are brought to bear in the company’s Hybrid Hub facilities as well.